


Hogwarts, 1935

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1930s, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-24 04:50:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7494462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve just wanted to make a friend. He really should have gotten Peggy to help translate the Greek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hogwarts, 1935

**Author's Note:**

> I believe it was biblionerd07 who asked for the Hogwarts AU, and thus of course I did two days of research for a tumblr drabble. In this universe, the boys are descendants of Celtic heroes (feel free to Google the terms they refer to each other by, since all my information is from the internet, I just needed potential wizard bloodlines), and they go on to get seriously involved in the wizarding war (in my imagination), though not necessarily on the clear cut sides you would expect. (There are so many laws, in the Wizarding World. Written laws demanding secrecy even when magic could help fight a war, unwritten laws dictating who Steve was allowed to love.)

He’d show Romilda, Steve thought, dragging the cauldron over to the worktable because he’d forgotten to put a lightening charm on it. Again. His mum had tried to weave lightening spells into all of Steve’s belongings before his first year – thankfully he’d outgrown most of the books that floated toward the ceiling if he wasn’t hanging on. He’d show his mum, too; always frowning when Steve turned up in the nurse’s wing again, sitting alone with _Dangerous Duels_ propped open on his lap, his cheeks stuffed with chocolate frogs.

It wasn’t like Steve didn’t have _any_ friends. Peggy always saved a space for him in the Gryffindor common room, and she let Steve tag along with all her Ravenclaw friends on Hogsmeade weekends. And Prof. Dumbledore always gave him extra lemon drops, even though Steve couldn’t stand the taste, and sometimes wished he’d been sorted into Ravenclaw instead. Their head of house never seemed to hand out lint-covered candies from her pockets.

All right, maybe he didn’t have as many friends as most sixth years. Maybe he didn’t have anyone to write to over summer holidays, or to invite up into the mysteriously empty room he’d found last year that looked out into the lake. Maybe he fought a little too often to be offered the prefect’s badge, or to ever have a hope of being Head Boy – but it didn’t give Romilda the right to look down her upturned nose at him, pushing up the glasses he knew really belonged to one of her six older sisters and smirking when he tripped on his too-long robes. _Aww, did widdle Stevie twip and break his face? Let’s hope Nurse Mummy can make it all better. Not that it matters – even without a crooked nose, who would want to be_ his _friend?_

Steve scowled into the simmering potion, giving it a strong counter-clockwise stir. Romilda didn’t know what she was talking about. Neither did the Black brats, the gang of them in their Slytherin green and their pointy chins, lurking around corners and laughing every year when Steve tried out for the Gryffindor quidditch team. Someone in Hogwarts must want to be friends with Steve. They were just shy, or maybe focused on the NEWTS next month, or busy with prefect duties… Steve blushed, and nearly nicked his finger chopping the rose petals.

Peggy was Head Girl this year, her sharp, cultured voice startling students out of crevices and embraces when she wasn’t buried under textbooks in the library. Celestina was the Gryffindor prefect, along with a Potter that Steve tried to pretend didn’t exist. He saw them coming out of meetings, tumbling out in a cluster of chatting sixth and seventh years, the Hufflepuff prefects waiting patiently near the back. A boy’s dark hair over pale eyes and a yellow and black scarf.

One of the Mac Gréines, his mum had told him, after healing the Hufflepuff’s knuckles when he’d punched Ursinus Black in the face. Steve hadn’t told her that the Hufflepuff had only punched Ursinus because the Black had filled Steve’s ear horn with leeches. Slytherins were all bottom-dwellers, at heart.

Hopefully Slughorn wouldn’t come in before Steve was finished, and had shot off a few airing charms to make it smell less like roses and melted chocolate. He wasn’t doing anything _wrong_. Not really. It wasn’t against the rules for the upper years to use the workrooms on weekends – and it wasn’t Steve’s fault that the only potion he could find for identifying someone who might care about him smelled a little flowery. And was written in pink ink, with sparkles that occasionally slipped off the page and onto the workbench. Besides, he had read the page three times, and all the potion would do was let him dream of someone who held them in their heart. Or something like that. Steve’s ancient Greek wasn’t stellar, but he’d definitely gotten the ‘dream’ and ‘heart’ bits right.

Besides, he thought, dumping in the dried and ground hares’ feet with a grimace, the only person drinking it would be him. Steve had been wishing for a real friend for years – this was no more than that, only with some horrid-sounding ingredients involved. What harm could a dream do?

* * *

“What the –” Something underneath Steve grunted, and if the sharp crack of Apparation hadn’t woken him up, the person flailing in his bed certainly would have.

“Who are you?” Steve shrieked, trying to leap out of bed and grab his wand at the same time. He landed on the stone floor, tangled in his blankets, his mouth still tasting like candied hearts from drinking the potion before bed. “And how’d you get here? You can’t Apparate in Hogwarts!”

“I know that!” the voice snapped back, thick with sleep and an Irish accent that all but vanished in the next few words. “But since you’re the one in _my_ bed, I’ll be asking the questions!”

“In your bed – I’m not …” Steve cast an illuminating spell, and found himself surrounded not by heaps of red draperies and five snoring adolescents (and Thomas’s socks, which always ended up under everyone else’s beds, and smelled of rotting cabbage), but by gold and black wall hangings in a very small room, gaping at pale eyes and dark hair. “You’re the Mac Gréine!” he gasped, pointing his wand at the other boy like his mum waggled her finger when she was mad.

The Mac Gréine boy muttered something that brought the lights up in the room, and rubbed his sleep-puffed face. “I’m a Barnes,” he replied shortly. “They’re from Brooklyn. In the United States. Long line of Muggles who don’t have to deal with shite like this.”

The Mac Gréine – the Barnes, Steve corrected, whatever a Barnes was – apparently only wore pants to bed. He climbed out slowly, eyeing Steve’s wand, but Steve was too busy eyeing the other boy’s thighs, the fading bruises on his chest and the corded muscles in his arms that came from being Hufflepuff’s team captain and first-class chaser.

“Tea?” the dark-haired boy offered, gesturing off-handedly at a teapot which responded by gurgling happily and dancing across the small table toward the cups.

Steve had meant to ask where the Hufflepuff’s dormmates were, but that question was subsumed by his shock at the way the teapot had responded without a wand, and so the resulting query was more a croaked, “Where are your – that _wandless_ magic?” He blushed furiously, and hoped that the blankets on the floor with him would swallow him up.

The Hufflepuff chuckled, a warm, friendly noise that drew Steve’s face out of his hands. He had tossed on an undershirt and some trousers, and had one hand stretched out to help haul Steve to his feet. “If you were my aunt,” the Barnes said, “that would have been, ‘Where are your manners, lad?’, but I assume you meant where are the other sixth-year boys?”

Nodding, Steve crossed his arms over his skinny chest and wondered what exactly he had mistranslated in the potion recipe. Why was there no entry in the Ancient Greek dictionary for ‘mortified due to landing atop Hufflepuff prefect while wearing old nightshirt that exposes very skinny legs?’

“Hufflepuffs like their privacy,” the other boy replied with a half shrug, running slender fingers through his hair and pouring the tea. He snapped his fingers and a packet of biscuits trotted over to his feet, but he didn’t seem inclined to explain the wandless magic, and even Steve could realize when a subject had been closed.

“You’re one of the Fianna,” the Hufflepuff said, gesturing Steve toward a squishy-looking yellow armchair. “From the Clann Baíscne. Sugar?” Steve nodded and took the proffered sugar jar, blinking when a small tea table bounded over from where it clearly doubled as a nightstand. “Sorry,” the taller boy apologized, sitting on the edge of his bed. “I don’t usually have guests. Especially Gryffindors who Apparate in around midnight.”

“How did you know who I was?” Steve mumbled, his mouth full of biscuit. “N’body knows about the Fianna.”

The Hufflepuff frowned. “That’s because they don’t teach history in this pile of rocks, not like they should. Your Pops died over in France. The whole unit of Fianna did, rescuing a horde of Muggles. He was Captain, yeah?”

“Capt. Joseph Rogers,” Steve agreed, straightening in his chair. “His picture is up in the hospital wing. I mean, Nurse Rogers, she’s-”

“Your Ma,” the Hufflepuff cut in easily, sipping at his tea. “I know. And you’re Steven.”

“Steve,” he corrected automatically. “And you’re the one who punched Ursinus Black.”

“I generally go by Bucky,” the Hufflepuff told him, grinning. “And Ursinus Black had it coming. Now are you going to tell me how you Apparated inside Hogwarts, or are you just going to eat all the cookies my sister sent from New York?”

Steve paused mid-bite, crumbs tumbling down the front of his nightshirt. “Umm. I. Well. I was hungry?” He stuffed the rest of the biscuit into his mouth and shrugged, hoping his face wasn’t as red as the rose petals he’d chopped up earlier that day.

“You do seem hungry,” the Hufflepuff – _Bucky_ – concurred, and tugged another package of biscuits out from under his bed. “But that doesn’t really explain why everything is covered in sparkles.”

Glancing at the floor, Steve realized that Bucky was right. It looked as though the sparking, joyful bits of magic laced into the spell’s ink had cascaded all over the gold and onyx drapes and onto the cracks in the worn stone floor. He choked on his tea.

“Never mind that,” Bucky said, waving the subject off as though there weren’t glittering bits of magic stuck to his cheek, or winking in his dark hair. “This castle’s always been a bit odd, you ask me. If Ma hadn’t shipped me off as soon as I levitated the bathtub, I could’ve gone to the local magic school.” His lips thinned and Steve wondered why, wanted to ask. Wanted to reach out and brush the crumbs off Bucky’s cheek. “But there’s no quidditch in New York, so that’s all right.”

“You’re the reason Hufflepuff won the House Cup this year,” Steve said, felt the words tumbling out of his mouth even after realizing that he sounded like one of the Hufflepuff fourth years who followed Bucky around, clamoring for his attention and tugging on his robes.

To Steve’s surprise, _Bucky_ blushed. “Thought you were cheering for the other team, there,” he muttered, as though he had seen Steve leap to his feet and shout when Bucky had made the goal that put Hufflepuff at 160, just before the Gryffindor Seeker caught the snitch. “You’re a Seeker, right?” Bucky continued, and Steve shook his head.

“No. No, I’m not even on the team,” he admitted, staring hard at the bottom of his teacup. He was never brewing another potion. At least not one that trapped him in the basement of Hogwarts with no way out, unless he wanted to be shouted at by Peeves _and_ Peggy trying to get back to his room.

“You should be,” Bucky snapped, frowning. “Your team captain’s an idiot for never letting you play.”

“You – you’ve seen me play?” Steve sounded as shocked as he felt. No one really noticed a scrawny blond kid in oversized robes, unless it was to trip him or laugh when he fell.

“Sure I have. You’re at tryouts every year, and you’re miles better than whichever Goshawk girl they’ve got now.” Bucky paused, and tilted his head to gaze at Steve. Hufflepuffs, Steve recalled, were always written off as loyal if a bit slow, but badgers were clever animals, quiet and patient but fierce when threatened. “Do you stay here during the summer?” he asked, watching Steve closely. “I know a few of the lads in the village play, and my aunt doesn’t much care where I stay, as long as I’m fed. She’s sure I’ll be joining the rebels as soon as I’ve got my diploma – that anyone against the Statute of Secrecy has to be for Grindelwald, and Hitler to boot, the batty old witch. We could set up some scrimmages this summer, if you wanted –”

He rubbed the back of his neck, dislodging a few sparkles that drifted slowly onto the bed. Steve fought down the grin straining his cheeks. Maybe potion making wasn’t so bad, even if it made your mouth taste like chocolate frogs and lemon drops, and Apparated you without asking your permission first. Maybe – “Yeah. That sounds good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Steve echoed, and didn’t try to hold back the enthusiasm bounding into the word. Maybe it wasn’t too late to make a friend, after all.


End file.
